Tensnake - Something About You

Tensnake - Something About You
"Coma Cat" was released two Januarys ago, in the dead of winter, when people needed a pick-me-up. It delivered in spades—and kept doing so right up to the end of the year, when it was at or near the top of endless dance publications' 2010 lists (RA placed it second). Its vibe was pretty retro, but not tied to a single period: the big piano chords, bounding bassline and stuttering stab-pattern vocals would have fit anywhere from mid-'80s NYC to acid-house London to mid-'90s Chicago and, obviously, beyond.

"Something About You," on the other hand, is more specifically reminiscent of the post-acid-house explosion—gauzy and E'd up, beholden to the idea of house as a post-sampling environmental groove rather than simply a set of rules to follow. The murmured title phrase and Hoover-noisy stab pattern play off each other like twin poles of what people used to mean by "house is a feeling," only here it doesn't seem like dogma. Jas Shaw's remix, meanwhile, slooooows it down a bunch, a la Belgian new beat, from the same period as the original recalls. It charmingly steps over the line between timeless and time-bound, even if its use value is pretty limited.